Return To Me
by Jaxalie
Summary: Set in the time of the Vietnamese War, Jasper goes to war and Alice is left to pick up the pieces of him, burdened by his disappearance, she writes him a series of letters to try move forward. Alice POV. M for Heavy content. A/U One Shot.


A/N - Something a little different from me, the idea came about from listening once more to the song I Still Believe from Miss Saigon and then strangely Run This Town by Rihanna. Anyway, it is in no way sexual but does deal with some difficult themes so just bear in mind how heavy this is. You have been warned. Read, Review, Tell me thoughts and improvements. :)

- J.

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><p><strong>Return to me<strong>

Have you ever felt the blinding darkness, the pain of a thousand knives against your flesh, begging, begging for you to take notice and acknowledge the things that change, the pain that happens and the world that ends?

I was happy. We both were, young and foolish, barely of our age and yet we were smart enough to live and to love, you and I, we loved one another beyond anything from the moment we saw each other in the park in the centre of town. I saw you and I knew you were the one, the person I was meant to spend forever with. My Jasper. Blond hair, beautiful brown eyes. The kindest smile a woman could ask for.

You turned to smile at me, the light just catching your face at the right angle making me see the world for the first time. Aspects of a man I was not meant to notice suddenly became important to my fifteen year old self. You were tall, a real man with broad shoulders that sloped in the most gradual way towards your hands. You had the largest hands I had ever seen and your smile, your smile was so strong and beautiful, I shamefully noticed a burning in my belly, a sensation like butterflies only lower down, taking over my very existence until the only thing I could imagine ever wanting was you.

My happy Jasper, my beautiful Jasper. I walked towards you with purpose, Isabella watched on scandalized as I boldly approached you, no matter that you were so clearly older than I, maybe nineteen or twenty… It didn't matter; all I saw was your light, your beauty. Men are not meant to be beautiful; my momma would always use words like 'handsome' and 'dashing' but neither of this words seemed strong enough. The only one that seemed fitting could be beauty. My beautiful Jasper.

I approached you and your group of companions, determined to speak with my angel. I walked with purpose across the space of the green between us, ignoring anyone within my way and you glanced up, looking over the shoulder of the man beside you with dark hair, Emmett, I soon learned. You looked up as though you knew, as though you had seen me and known yourself that I was on purpose to meet you. The other men beside you paled in comparison as their conversations continued, the bronze haired one spoke across the group causing a brief smile to cross your features in a new way. God I felt flushed, hot and cold at the same time.

Overly aware of my movements, I pushed on, my hands in my dress pockets, my legs pushing forward one step at a time as my dress fanned and swished along my legs in an almost hypnotic rhythm that informed me too well that I was alive. I had dreamed I would see you, meet you, and here you were in my grasp, beautiful and tall and so full of smiles around your companions, I barely noticed the uniform that hugged your form. I only paid attention to your soul.

Almost halfway to you, she appeared at your side. A woman older than I, fatter and more rounded with curves than I would ever be, her hair falling in luscious waves to the small of her back, dark as ebony and thicker than anything. Her dark skin contrasting to yours as her arm linked with yours. Your smile turned down to her instead and I felt my heart rip, I felt the tearing start without even realizing how shameful my cheeks burned. My eyes burned with tears and suddenly I was falling, the wind rushing past my cheeks and blowing my short black hair out from under my hair wrap, my shoe slipped too gracefully from my foot as I fell for almost an age. My hands had barely moved to catch my fall when suddenly strong arms gripped my forearms, steadying me from my fall. A strong chest in my view as a scent unlike anything else enveloped me. Musky and sweet and pure man.

I glanced slowly up, my cheeks burning bright in the worst blush I could think as I gazed an impossible way up to lay my eyes on your face, so close to my own, enough to notice the lightest dusting of freckle to your smooth flesh. A cheerful smile ghosted out over your lips which were pinker and fuller than they had any right to be. Men were not meant to look like this. Men were meant to have beards and bellies or slicked back hair. You were different; you were unlike anything I had seen.

Brown eyes, deeper than the night pulled me up with some unseen force until I was stood upright, my bare foot rested to the green grass beneath my feet. I felt my cheeks grow redder, my own dumbfounded expression overtaking my entire being. My throat felt dry and I was certain my hands were clammy under your gaze. Your smile seemed only to fade for the shortest of moments before something flashed through those eyes, you raggedly breathed in right before my eyes, my own breathing instantly seemed to match yours as a hushed and almost dazed whisper escaped your lips.

"Hello there, little lady." A southern accent, thick as maple syrup and just as smooth, my knees threatened to go weak right then and there. A small embarrassed smile ghosted your features as it seemed your own cheeks reddened slightly. Your voice seemed stronger yet just as shaken on your next words. "You should be careful what shoes you wear when you cross such thick grass. I don't think heels were made for soil." Your smile returned gradually, charming and oozing with something as natural as the wind. A charisma unlike anything I had seen before.

"I…I'm Alice." I barked out, too loudly, instantly looking down as yet more heat flooded my cheeks. You chuckled softly, a beautiful sound to match your beautiful face.

"Pleasure to meet you, Miss Alice, my name is Jasper." I swallowed and looked up and found myself lost within your gaze. I ignored the stares of those around us, hardly even seeming to notice that both of our groups had moved around us, the woman who had been on your arm moments before glaring from the edge of the circle with the others. I looked up the long way to your gaze, you were so tall, beyond anything I had imagined possible.

A gasped and soft whisper escaped my lips on its own intention. "You've kept me waiting a long time." Your smile became lopsided, more of a grin yet as gentle as a feather, your voice matching the feebleness of my own with the definitive conviction behind each syllable. "I'm sorry Ma'am."

Laughter broke the spell between us, a cackle completely opposite to the sound of your laughter moments before. Harsher and more like a hoot. "Looks like our Jasper's star struck." My head instantly whipped to the large man from before. He was smiling with the largest dimples plastered on his cheeks, making him look more boy than man. The woman beside him, the one who had had your arm, sneered at him maliciously and yet he appeared to ignore her completely. You turned as I had and rolled your eyes expertly to the goliath male.

"Don't be rude, Emmett." You turned back to me, meeting my gaze and for the first time, I knew I was home. Just a look and I knew you were my destiny; you seemed so beautiful and happy in your uniform. Like nothing in the world could take away the smile that flowed so freely from your soul.

You knelt down and fixed the shoe back to my foot, all the while ignoring the glares and cusses of the woman beside Emmett. It was as though to you, she was not there. You took my hand without pretence and lead me, along with the group, to the nearest diner, where each of us introduced one another. Emmett and Rosalie appeared to hit it off straight away, her attitude problem beside his puppy like appearance made for an interesting match whilst Edward charmed the shyer, less boisterous Isabella from her solitude. I learned the woman was Maria, and she meant something to you, something I could not bring myself to understand because you were mine.

We spoke for hours, long past the time when Maria eventually stormed out, when the others had decided to escort one another home and long past the closing of the diner. I didn't care that my mother would wonder where I was, I didn't care that you had been a stranger until that morning. You were my Jasper from the moment I first met you and before.

That was before the war, before the changes. We rushed the engagement into marriage only five months later, knowing full well that you, my Jasper, were to be shipping out on the nearest plane for Saigon. A far away place that I did not even know the position of the map. Women were not supposed to know geography. You taught me what you knew in that short time though, treating me like a friend as well as a lover and a lady. Always my gentleman.

I watched as you left and cried in the arms of my friends who did not understand. Everyone else said scandal was marriage of a fifteen year old to a man of twenty, let alone one who would be shipping off to fight a war in some far off place that was not our own. I was ridiculed and pitied and mocked but not once, not once did I regret my choice to marry you. You were, you are, my Jasper.

Months without you there and it became apparent another change was on the horizon, my belly swelled and my feet ached. My head pounded and I could barely keep down the water. My mother shunned me from the moment she found out the life that you and I had created. Father, he was more understanding, having served in wars of his own time. He tried to help me in the months you were not there, but it was not enough. I missed you with the very heart of me, the very essence of my soul cried for your return while the child grew.

The doctors swore I was too small for this, that the size difference was too much an issue for my small hips. But I carried him, I carried him for you Jasper. And I waited, I waited for your return, even as the date of his birth neared and narrowed down to hours. I knew you would come home to me, and so I waited.

Pain was harsh, I felt like death would be clasping me at any moment, but Rosalie held my hand. Father was not allowed in and mother… she refused to even see the child. Did you know that? She wouldn't touch him. Said he was sin and the devil wrapped into one. She couldn't understand why I loved him so, when he hurt me. I said, I love him because of his father. I love his father as such too. She just turned her back on me again. I was shameful, I was a disgrace. And yet I felt no regret.

Because I loved you from the moment I saw you, Jasper. I waited for an age; I bore the pain of a thousand knives through my flesh as our child came. Forever telling him that you would return. Two years. That was all it took before the news came. Isabella burst through our door with it, the letter clutched in her hands, tearstained and heartbroken.

"He's dead!" she cried, and I thought my heart had stopped. My mind instantly flittered to you, your beautiful face, your blonde hair only matched by the blonde curls of our son. Bella's arms flew around my neck as she sobbed harder and harder, her eyes already stained with tears shed, puffy and painful and yet I could not move. I would not move. "Alice! He's dead! His mother got the news in. He died over two weeks ago."

Two weeks. My heart felt like it had stopped for that moment.

"Oh god Alice, what am I going to do without him?" Bella sobbed against my free shoulder, in the other arm sat our child. Nearly one year old as he held fast to my hip with his strong legs, his hand stroked past my breast to Bella's hair, as though he could know the pain that crushed with her words as finally they snapped in place. Not you, no you were not dead. Not the only soldier sent to war.

"Edward." I felt a sickening weight lift from my shoulders. I was horrible, I was the most horrible person on earth, to feel relieved that it was not you, not my soldier, torn apart by war and murdered coldly on another mans land. I felt sick at myself, the satisfaction and relief was evil, as my mother had always preached. My arm fell loosely around Bella's shoulders, holding her closer to my treacherous chest while she mourned the death of a man I could not bring myself to grieve for. Not after the imagination of your loss.

Our child seemed to grieve more than I, his brown eyes watering with the weight of Bella's tears; he stroked his small hand thought Bella's hair and comforted her when I could not. My weight was not over, for Bella she knew her soldier's fate but I, the true one without a hope, waited against all odds with bated breath for your return. Knowing every moment that the chances of you returning to me where slim to none.

We sat through the funeral, sat beside Emmett who had returned nearly a year before, injured enough that he was not made to return to the war, some forms of shrapnel still imbedded in his thick back meant that he was forced from then to use a cane. And yet he still pulled an arm around Bella and around the Cullens, Edward's family as the honorary gunshots filled the air. I covered our child's ears, my gaze blank and staring, waiting still for your return even as the ceremony ended and the wake began.

We tried to live on in that time without you, Bella tried to move on from her childish love crush while everyone else went on to pretend things were normal, like you were not missing from the notice of us. Still lost within a foreign country and missing from your wife, your son.

It was barely a week since the news of Edward's death that I sat with Michael, our Michael, on my lap, cleaning a small graze from his milk white knee. His big brown eyes were filled with tears and it ached to look at him. How much he seemed like you. I was so wrapped up in him it was only when I heard the engine cut that there was a car waiting in front of the small house that we owned. I glanced up from the work to see the door open and a mop of blonde hair come from within the car.

I gasped widely and Michael began to cry out, holding his arms instantly towards the car. You came forward and I thought my heart would stop. There were bags under your beautiful eyes, and sharp scars covering your once smooth flesh. And yet you were there, my Jasper. Every inch of you. I leapt up and felt as though the world had been lifted; the sun was finally shining through the cloud. I looked up speechless to your once so beautiful eyes and found a haunting that scared me more than anything. I wanted to step back, but at the same time I wanted nothing more than to kiss your features to make sure you were really there and not some figment of my imagination run wild.

You ducked your head down and kissed Michael's forehead softly without a word before shakily holding your hand out to me, pulling me under your arm and I noticed the strain in your eyes, the wince of pain that looked all too familiar of the men I had noticed return. Frightening close to the look Emmett had worn from his hospital bed. You leant in and kissed me like a starving man and I knew you were home with me.

No words could describe what I felt seeing you there, with out son. No words could ever match the elation, the fear, the pure ecstasy that filled my veins. But you were different, the happiness, I noticed, was fleeting. Your first weeks here were wonderful, but then, I noticed the nightmares started. The shaking, the screaming, the pain of someone hurting.

Your physical scars, the ones that ran the length of your torso, your arms, ravaged against your neck. Torture wounds, Emmett had explained to me when I asked, were nothing in comparison to the mental scars that seemed to tear through you at night, making you into the meekest and most vulnerable I had seen you. My happy Jasper was gone and in his place was a broken mirror of the man I loved and I was so fearful and yet knew within every fibre of my being, it did not matter. You were my Jasper.

No matter what you had been through, no matter how many scars you showed, you were so ashamed of them, but I knew, I know, you are my beautiful Jasper. It's just the nightmares that tear the elation apart and splatter each aspect of my existence with fear.

Emmett said they would die down, that it was a natural thing that even he had experienced on his return and each day I prayed he was right, because regardless of your scars, your fears, you are my Jasper. Changed and hurt and still undeniable in your beauty, your kindness, your worship of me; of our son.

It only makes me wish I could know the pain you feel, the remainder and ghosts of your past that for some reason you seem to hide from me. I try, my Jasper, I try my hardest but when you wake in the night, screaming and I don't know what to do. Those are the moments when I fear fear itself. Your head rests to my thighs as you cry and I just find myself begging to know why. To share the burden with you. But somehow I know that you will never tell me, that you would never let me see the horrors you did, because you are too good. Always the gentleman, even when I wish you were not.

So instead of just asking you, I write these letters, trying to send them to you, to show them but each time, I do nothing but tear them apart. Tear them apart like the scars that tear at your heart and seem to be eternal. Nearly as eternal as the love we are meant to share.

Return to me. Please.

Your Alice.


End file.
